


Monsters

by Fericita



Series: When All Is Lost [23]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, Stained Glass, Wedding Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27287062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita
Summary: an Agduna story for the Fall/Monster themed Frozine The Monster Mash: https://frozines.tumblr.com/Thank you to @the-spaztic-fantastic for beta-ing and brainstorming and coming up with Lady Wollen who we love to love.  Every story I write is better for your eyes on it.  I love this WAIL verse we came up with.Only four days until Dangerous Secrets comes out! I can't wait to see what in WAIL ends up being canon and what is not.  Hooray for an official book on these two nerds.
Relationships: Agnarr/Iduna (Disney)
Series: When All Is Lost [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571230
Comments: 13
Kudos: 15





	Monsters

Agnarr stood as she entered, and she thought about how in just a few hours a chapel full of people would rise as she walked down the center aisle, regal and calm even though she was currently neither of those things. 

“I’m glad you came. I wasn't sure you would get the message. The servants are in a state today,” Agnarr said and Iduna could see that he was holding something in one hand. He walked to her and then kissed her, the same quick press of lips that had announced their courtship in the Castle Courtyard before the assembled citizens, the same one he sought at the end of his coronation ceremony. 

She would have liked to find more in his lips - be it calm for the momentous day ahead, or the stoking of a fire that could finally be tended tonight in their own room. 

Their own room! 

But he was ready to talk business so she drew back and smiled, thinking of all the ways she could tell him with her own kiss later what it was she wanted.

“It’s covered,” he said, gesturing to a panel of stained glass that was hidden behind a thick white banner with the Arendelle crocus stitched in gold in the middle. “Only just this morning. I wanted you to see before the ceremony. To make sure it was done to your liking.”

Iduna looked and nodded, relieved. She shivered, remembering what was memorialized in the brightly colored glass. Grotesque faces, half beast and half man, twisted in anger, heads bent low, charging with curved antlers. The Northuldra rendered as monsters. Attacking Arendelle soldiers who were broader and more smartly dressed than any she had seen in all her time in the kingdom. 

When it had been unveiled last week as a wedding present, Agnarr had squeezed her around the waist, keeping her upright until the artist left and she had collapsed into a pew. “I didn’t know,” he had said, kneeling in front her, grabbing her hands. “I didn’t know it would be like that.” But Iduna should have guessed what an artist whose wife was lost to the north would choose to represent in the glass of a chapel. She should have guessed what the Arendellians still thought of her home. It was why no one, save Agnarr, knew of her origins.

“It’s fine,” she said now, deciding she would not shiver for it again. The only monsters she had ever seen were some Arendellians, bragging about killing a Northuldra tradesman in the woods just after she had first arrived. 

But Agnarr didn’t know of that. And she wouldn’t tell him. She kept the monsters away by not talking about them. Otherwise, it felt like they would devour her whole. “Do you think anyone will wonder why we want it covered? And then removed?” 

Agnarr shrugged. “If they do, I’ll say we wanted to commemorate a triumph instead of a tragedy. Perhaps one of you, saving the kingdom during the epidemic.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t want that.” She didn’t want to be seen as a monster, but she didn’t want to be god-like either. They were two sides of a coin that could get you killed, and she had learned enough of this country’s strange religion to understand that.

“Maybe they were monsters,” she said, though she didn't believe it fully. It was her deepest fear and the only one that made the wedding today feel ill-fated. She loved Agnarr with her whole self. But what did her whole self have hidden in its depths? When Agnarr told stories of the forest before he knew it was her home, it was magical and frightening with monster spirits lurking on the unseen edges. Mystery and terror. The mist had come down and his father was dead, so surely she missed something about her people, about herself. 

He drew closer to her and opened her hand from the fist she had clenched it into, placing a locket on a long chain into it.

“They weren’t monsters. And you can remember them well.”

Iduna breathed deeply and opened the locket. She gasped.

It was a portrait of her mother. Not like the one he had commissioned a year ago, when Iduna’s carefully worded descriptions of her mother’s features to the castle portrait artist had resulted in a beautiful painting of a woman in Arendellian style. Her hair in two braids, the dirndl dress in purples and greens. It was all wrong and Iduna hadn’t sought it out again once it was placed in the library. Seeing her mother transposed to Arendelle hurt her in a way she couldn’t express and made her question her own choice to abandon reindeer-hide boots and a long gatki with silver fastenings. To leave her language unspoken on her tongue and the songs of her people swallowed down when she saw a full moon or the play of northern lights against the deep purple of the sky.

But Agnarr had noticed. And here was her proof. It was a miniature of her mother’s face, close up. Just her face. Her eyes had the kindness Iduna remembered.

“Thank you,” Iduna said, clutching it to herself. “I love it. And I love you. Your kindness, your generosity. I am so happy to become your wife today.”

He cupped his hand around her cheek and used his thumb to wipe away the tears that had begun to fall. “I love you too. All of you. The Northuldra and the Arendelle. And I will love you and keep you safe.”

She turned her head to kiss his palm and then they were kissing the way she wanted to, desire and comfort wrapped up together as she pressed herself against him and he pulled her even closer with his arm at the small of her back. And when Lady Wollen came in and separated them so they could prepare for the wedding ceremony, Iduna knew that the vows they had already exchanged were the ones she would remember.


End file.
